The students were introduced to two concepts today – that Perception and Reality can be very different and that Western Civilization has two basic and opposing Worldviews on the nature of Reality itself (going back to Plato vs. Aristotle). Characters from the sci-fi movie, The Matrix, were used to illustrate the point.

The introductory unit ” Perception, Cognition and Worldviews” focuses on how people’s understanding of the world around them is affected by their culture, ideas and history; and, in turn, how their actions can create systemic changes that shape worldviews. The following are terms, concepts and individuals used for this unit of study ( If you don’t what some of these are, don’t panic – the whole point of education is to learn new things, not rehearse what you already know):

Students today are already operating in an increasingly digitized, interdependent but highly competitive world. Parents, teachers, school boards and administrators, legislators and community leaders need to think in terms of the next forty years, not today or their own youthful experiences, when making educational decisions.

Check out an overview of the rate of change:

The old question adults once asked children when trying to guide them to think of the future was: ” What do you want to be when you grow up ?” A better one for today might be “When you grow up, what kind of options do you want to have ?”.